We've been selling beautiful Indian bedcovers for over 45 years!
We opened our first store in 1974 with minimal stock: a waterbed I'd made from recycled timber joists, Indian bedspreads, handmade pottery and not much more. Water beds have gone by the wayside but we've never stopped selling Indian bedspreads. The first time we went to India we simply fell in love with the diverse fabrics of that amazing country.
These Purple and Black Kantha bedspreads on vivid printed fabrics come from the desert regions of Rajasthan where we buy them from a women's cooperative that ensures decent pay and provides a creche and schooling for the children.
The simple embroidered motifs of elephants and peacocks on this single bedspread show a delightful use of satin and chain stitch, the repetition of the pattern gives a vibrancy and energy to the design.
Striped, printed, checked, jacquard loomed, tie dyed, silk, cotton, jute, embroidered, appliquéd, handwoven, sequinned - the Indian textile tradition is more imaginative and varied than you could possibly imagine. Different regions, different castes, different religions all produce their own individual styles. If you want to see the amazing regional variations of Indian textiles, I'd recommend a trip to the sari collection at the Craft Museum at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. Not many people go there and it needs some love and attention but the fabrics are breathtaking.
This Red Earth Bedspread is also from the collective that makes the Kantha Bedspreads. The popular patchwork design of squares within squares is a traditional geometric form that also creates the shapes in popular children's games that you see scratched into the ground.
A similar pattern but with some of the squares replaced by circles is seen in this self coloured embroidered White Taj bedspread from the same region. It has over one thousand small mirrors called Shesha, traditionally made by coating the inside of handblown glass spheres with molten zinc and then breaking the glass into small pieces.
Vibrant colours, rich earthy natural dyes, almost colourless neutrals, deep indigos, strident clashing colours and the subtlest of contrasts, they're all there read to fit in with any style from Boho to utterly ethnic to minimal contemporary.
This wonderful vibrant Plum Icat bedspread is one of several icat bedspreads we had made from panels of vintage silk icats, each piece is a work of great craftmanship.
This stunning Gold Silk Icat Bedspread is another from the same collection.
The Tree of Life is a recurrent theme in Indian culture and images can take many forms. The Tree of Life can bee seen in wood carvings, stone lattice work and in printed and appliquéd fabrics such as these stunning examples:
Black Printed Tree of Life Bedspread, made by a family we know in Delhi.
This Appliqued Tree of Life Bedspread is a stunning and time consuming piece made by the same collective we mentioned earlier. They specialise in indigo dyeing and the last bedspread in this blog, the indigo patchwork was also made by them.
